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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Hey, Cus I really enjoyed the dreamy yet melancholy flavor of your Solitude. Knotty, you really put all of yourself into All of You. And 10, in my opinion your Lady Bird flew and landed quite well.

I also greatly enjoyed the recordings of Jarrett and Kelly doing ATTYA and AL, respectively.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on Buck Trends, while adjusting to a new keyboard. I replaced my 61-key Yamaha E313 with an 88-key Yamaha P-105. It's a step closer to the real thing, with a wider expanse and weighted keys. I'm building muscles.

Well, back to the drawing board. Keep those cards and letters coming in!

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Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. -- Novalis

Thankyou Norm, and congratulations on your new instrument! As for building muscles, are you sure to keep your shoulders and arms relaxed as you play? I remember you'd had some physical problems, and lately I've seen people sooooo tense while playing.

As for me, I've instituted a weekday 8-9am practice slot in the house during which I can make noise and have minimal interruptions. It's going a bit better and I'm hoping once the dust settles I can get back into joi. I just have such a desperate need to work up some classical stuff first.

Thankyou Norm, and congratulations on your new instrument! As for building muscles, are you sure to keep your shoulders and arms relaxed as you play? I remember you'd had some physical problems, and lately I've seen people sooooo tense while playing.

Thanks for the reminder. I tend to forget what I need to remember when I most need to remember what I tend to forget: shoulders and arms -- tense, relax, and release -- with suggestions of warmth and heaviness.

So far, my cervical "issues" are at bay. And I know what exercises to perform to keep arthritis ignorant of its purpose.

Meantime, I'm working to get through Buck Trends just once without any glaring errors. Once accomplished, I'll push Record and forget again how to read music.

Now. Where was I?

_________________________
Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. -- Novalis

The typical tool in dealing with anxiety issues is Exposure and Response Prevention. In my case, I expose myself to a microphone, and prevent the natural albeit dysfunctional response to hightail it out and head for the hills.

I approached this enterprise fully intending to quiet my hands, and model a smooth legato without tripping over triplets. After a few takes, I forgot all that and just wanted to get through it one time without freezing into a stunned deer-in-the-headlights form of paralysis. So dutifully I lowered my standards, slowed the speed to a clipped 45 bpm and then pushed ahead to a breezy 93 bpm.

I'm on book 2 of the Four Star Series, so I'm still only pretending to read the JOI tunes, while my sight reading skills remain solidly at the "Run Jane Run" level.

So for what it's worth, here's my go at Buck Trends. Out of 7 takes, this one was the best of the bad lot: Normy's Best. I stayed pretty mellow with the singing as exhaustion outstripped inspiration:

Hey NormLesson 10 was great. I liked the LH chords version the best, it sounded really nice on your new keyboard, your rhythm and singing were perfect.For the 2 hands version, now that you have a fully weighted keyboard, you can try to keep your LH soft. I know that this is difficult, I also tend to play my LH loudly when I am stressed out improvising.

93 bpm is fast for these hard songs. Even 84 bpm is enough to absorb this language and tonality.

Congrats for moving onto Book 2 for the sight-reading. When you come to arrangements, you will probably want to write down the nice chords you come up with, so your sight-reading will be richly rewarded.

Thanks for the kind words of support. I'll do what I can to keep the left hand unleaded and light. I had great fun playing with the last four measures of Buck Trends. I just had to repeat them over and over again at different strengths and speeds, with varying levels of sloppiness. And I just had to stand up and dance with it too, making like the second coming of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Fortunately, no one saw me.

So, now I can return to the relative sanity (and hyperkinetic triplets!) of Blues Angle.

_________________________
Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. -- Novalis

Norm: sit on a potato. Think of the greatest Guru you ever heard of while watching reruns of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Chant "me wants to play jazz good" at the fifth chakra for 31 minutes. The jazz channel will open in your brain and you'll play fantastic!

We lucked out in midtown, everything fine here. Much of NYC, 90 % of Long Island and New Jersey are without power, anything close to the beach got pretty much wiped out. No subways at all in the city for the foreseeable future..